👟👠 Friendly advice? (#18)

Hi !  Welcome back. Surprise surprise…it’s August 🤯 . This week I am thinking (and writing) about friendships, the Olympics, inspirational stories and …vultures?. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you can join here or by clicking the button below. - Eve D.❣️

WEEK IN REVIEW

I walked a 10km hike yesterday, up and down a mountain, and I didn’t die, although at some points I thought I would. Getting more and more ready for Kruger. Will be doing about FOUR of those hikes in two days while I’m there, so still some serious work to do. But I’m feeling more and more confident.

Have been glued to the Olympics. Absolutely loving them, and in total awe of all the athletes - their dedication and pursuit of excellence is inspiring. Also seeing so much heartbreak though. I had lunch with a friend who represented South Africa in World Championships and he took me through some of the psychology of competitive sport. Safe to say, not for me! I’ll stick to being a couch coach. (Seen on Twitter: “I’ve shouted so much sporting advice from my sofa already this summer. It’s very tiring but hopefully it’s helping.” 😀 )

Still writing my book, and loving the process ❣️ 

FREE THERAPY

USELESS GADGETS

A friend in need?

We need to talk about friend.com. It’s a device you wear around your neck and can interact with, to act as “your friend”. Think of it like a tamagotchi on steroids. It monitors everything you do throughout your day, you can talk directly to it by pressing a button on the device, and it texts you “intelligent” conversations and responses randomly. It’s available for pre-order for $99.

First, here is the ad for the device (at first I though it was a Saturday Night sketch, but alas no). It’s fcking freaky and equally scary. Please watch it to get a sense of the horror this is proposing.

(The comments are very negative. People hate the idea, and they hate the ad. Example: Who did you hire to make this ad? This is easily one of the creepiest ads I've ever seen. I kept expecting this to reveal itself as some indie horror movies about an AI assistant that becomes obsessed with and stalks the people it talks to. That would have been a much more interesting idea than another AI assistant that will go bankrupt in less than a year.)

Now, I can think this would be extremely useful for people who have a genuine problem interacting with other humans, like some kids on the Autism spectrum. I know they get a lot of use out of other devices like Amazon’s Alexa. For these kids (and adults, I guess), this could alleviate loneliness that would otherwise be difficult to fix.

But I can also see other kids (and adults!) just defaulting to this device for companionship, because real human interactions can be so much hard work, and often bring heartache and distress. But of course, connecting with other humans is something we are hard wired to do, and it is an actual, absolute need we have. It cannot be cheated. (Isolation prison cells are barbaric).

I can’t imagine a greater push to a mental health crisis than kids Zac’s age getting their hands on this, and using it as a full time friend-on-call, rather than learning how to cultivate real, strong relationships and friendships.

Also, to make it worse, the “friend” is limited to the device. You can’t back it up, or transfer it, so if you lose the gadget, all the interactions, the memories, the “friendship”(??) is just …gone. I can imagine that this would be horrendously traumatic for someone who had developed an unhealthy, parasocial obsession with the device.

And just to be clear: in order to work properly, the device has to listen in on its owner’s entire life, 24/7. It needs to know what they are doing, where and with whom so it can “support them” throughout the day. That also means that it is recording and monitoring other normal people (you and me) that the owner is interacting with. So…a hornet’s nest of privacy issues.

Fun fact: the company that is doing this raised $2.5 million in venture capital to get it off the ground, and then spent $1.8 million to purchase the domain. And this is who’s in charge of our kids’ mental health….

Hopefully it all goes bust before it goes boom.

OF INTEREST…

Various thinks I’ve bookmarked this week, to share with you:

💥 Magenta doesn’t exist. When we look at a rainbow, we see every colour we could imagine - except magenta. We see all the colours in “visible light”, within a specific wavelength range, but there is no wavelength for magenta - we make it up by mixing pure red and pure blue light. I’m realizing there’s actually a lot of stuff our brain just makes up!

💥 Olympic ambitions. My kids and I are debating which sport we could take up today to qualify for the Olympics in 4 years time. For me, it seemed shooting would be a likely choice, as age doesn’t seem to be a factor there. (Adriana Ruano took up shooting as a hobby in 2011 after a spinal injury dashed her hopes as a gymnast. She volunteered for the Rio Olympics to support her teammates, and decided to get back into competitive sport. She won gold in Paris, and Guatemala’s first medal ever!). But, based on this tool which takes your height and weight into account, it looks like Javelin is my sport. If you have similar Olympic ambitions, you can cut to the chase and use the tool to figure out what you could excel in.

💥 And don’t think it’s not possible! Zeng Zhiying made her Olympic debut in Paris at age 58. She was a star table tennis player at age 18, but when rules of game changed to allow double sided paddles, her game was thrown off and she never made the Olympic team. She coached a bit, but then walked away from the game for good in 2000. However, when Covid hit she bought herself a table tennis table and….decided to start training so she could represent her current country (Chile) in Paris. And she’s there now!

💥 Small eggs, huge life! Look at the tiny eggs that give rise to the amazing creatures. Incredible.

💥 Here’s a crazy story about how our nature chain works. In the 1990s India used a specific drug to treat cattle, which incidentally ended up being lethal to vultures. Vultures feed off cattle carcass, and as a result all 50 million vultures in India were wiped out. But as it turns out, vultures act as a natural “sanitation system”. They eat pathogens of dead animals, and thus keep the water systems clean(er). With no vultures, India’s water became contaminated, and 500,000 people died as a result. India is now breeding vultures to restore the balance.

FUNNY THINGS SEEN ON TWITTER:

🤣 “The kids were asking me what time they were all born and I said the youngest was born at 1:29am, and they all agreed that it must have been nice that she just came out while I was sleeping.” - @missmulrooney

🤣 My 4-year-old was asking about childbirth and asked, “did it hurt?” As I was giving my carefully considered answer about how, “yes it did but it was worth it,” she interrupted, “no. I mean, did it hurt me? Did I get a plaster?” - @BodilUK

🤣 about to use y=mx+b to figure out the slope of the line you just crossed

🤣 Ralph Lauren’s son David Lauren married a woman named Lauren Bush (her uncle is George W) and she took his last name so now her name is Lauren Lauren. What the hell.

🤔 It’s not really a waste of time if it took you that long to realize what a waste of time it was. A waste of time is an existential lesson, you have go through the “wasted” time to recognize it, and so that time wasn’t really wasted - @schrodringsbrt

PERSERVERANCE

OK, allow me one more story about the Olympics! This is Eric Moussambani from Equatorial Guinea. He competed in Sydney 2000 in the 100m Freestyle heat - alone. He was supposed to swim with two others, but they were disqualified. Eric had never swum a full length of a 50m pool before! He almost didn’t make it (nearly touched the rope, for instant disqualification) but managed to get to the other end in 1:52:72 (the slowest time in Olympic history). So what wsa going on?

The IOC had decided that to promote swimming in developing countries, they would have a “wild card” entry into the Olympics. Eric showed up for the trials (he had heard about them on the radio), and since he was the only one who showed up, he made the team 😂 .

Two problems: Eric couldn’t swim and Equatorial Guinea had no 50m pools .. the most he could get was access to the 12m pool at one of the hotels, a couple of times per week and some fisherman to teach him how to swim. When he arrived in Sydney he didn’t even have a swim suit…the South African coach gave him the blue Speedo.

But…after the Olympics, Erick kept on swimming. In 6 years, his PB (Personal Best) was 52:18, just 5 seconds off the winning time in Sydney and would have gotten him a Gold at the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 (a crazy fact all on its own!!). He started teaching swimming in Equatorial Guinea as the official country’s coach, (they now have two Olympic sized pools) and is an inspiration to new swimmers globally. ❤️‍🔥 

Happy Birthday to Monica Lewinsky. This woman is a testament to dignity, perseverance and resilience. If you haven’t seen her TED talk on “The Price of Shame”, I highly recommend it. It has 13m+ views.

Thanks for reading!

That’s it for this week. (Want more? You can find past editions here). I hope you have a great weekend and upcoming week. Please keep sharing /forwarding to your friends/groups 😄 . You can also email me privately by hitting reply on this email.

PS